Reflections

I was going to head out for a run yesterday evening, but decided to slow things down and go for a walk. It was a beautiful spring day, and I've been neglecting my camera. So on went the ipod and off I strolled with Jackson Browne along the river and through the local neighborhoods. Yes, I was the weird gaijin roaming around Japanese neighborhoods singing with my headphones on and carrying a camera. Hide the children!!!

I've mentioned it before but one of the endearing things about Japanese urban sprawl (to me at least), and its shoe-horned neighborhoods, is that they plop rice paddies and community gardens down amid all the ruckus. They've flooded the paddies in preparation for this years crop, but have yet to plant the rice, and I like the way the buildings reflect in them.

I find myself in my annual 'it's spring, I'm happy, life is good' frame of mind lately. Part of it is certainly due to the upturn in springiness, but there's more to it. Thinking back over the last year, for the first time in nearly that long, things have calmed down to as close to 'normal' as they ever get with me.

Starting at about this time last year, our wedding plans started to get serious, and only intensified as the date got closer. The wedding was great, but from there we started a new term in full stride, without coming up for even the slightest breath. And that term proved to be my most challenging so far by a long shot. Not only was I mentally pretty wiped out, but that winter term seems to drag on for ages and ages in the darkness of Kanazawa winter, and to top it off the students and I failed to jive even remotely.

I somehow scraped along and collapsed across the finish line, and then it was off to Europe. For all the wonderful aspects of our honeymoon, an exercise in relaxation it was not. And now we're almost a month deep into our new term, and things are...mellow. I've got a slightly lighter teaching load, and even though I'm teaching two new classes that I have to make all new materials for, it all seems so much more doable. I'm engrossed in having to do nothing more than the minimum responsibilities of everyday life: work, eat, clean the apartment now and then, go to the gym...blah blah blah. There is nothing extracurricular, nothing looming on the horizon. Life is mundane in the most satisfying way.

Of course, this won't last, which I'm convinced is a good thing, as much as I embrace the lack of action at the moment. A life this unstressful would get boring very quickly if it was a sure thing. But for now, it's all I've been yearning for over the past months.

For a long time I considered myself a supremely mellow dude; it was a point of pride. Observant people have pointed out that in reality I'm not that mellow at all. I'm not sure the extent to which it manifests itself outwardly, but as much as I hate to admit it to myself, I have a very hard time taking things in stride. I'm too analytical for my own good, I think, and wrangle over things in my mind rather than just letting them play out, letting the answers reveal themselves at their own pace. Which is funny, I'm learning, because the answers, the understanding, the inevitable outcome, always seem to come at their own pace, regardless of how much I wrangle.

So that's what I'm trying to focus on with this year's springtime, 'anything is possible' phase. Mellow out Casey. Don't stop analysing things, but don't beat them to death. Whooooo...catharsis -- it does the body (and mind) a world of good.

Another thing that does the body and mind a world of good is a day off from work, which we have tomorrow. And then next week we have two more. Like I said, things are...mellow. For a limited time engagement, no doubt, but you've got to take while the taking's good. I'll try to get more pics up here soon; I've been slacking. Have a good one, wherever you roam.